Grozny's ‘Embassy’ in Kazan Quite Active but Typically Below the Radar Screen

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 21 – At the dawn of Soviet times, regions and republics routinely set up representative offices in Moscow and also in other regions with whom they had lots of business to compensate for the lack of adequate communication. While many were eliminated later, some continue to work to this day.

            The permanent representations of the union republics became the basis for the formation of embassies when these countries became independent, with the embassies often located in the same buildings and consisting of the same people as the permanent representations had had earlier.

            Some non-Russian republics and predominantly ethnic Russian oblasts and krays also set up offices not only in the Russian capital but also in their counterparts elsewhere in Russia or even abroad. Most have shut down since 1991, but some remain and a few new ones have opened -- although they seldom get much attention, despite being “proto-embassies” as it were.

            (For background, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/01/non-russian-republic-embassies-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/10/embassies-of-non-russian-republics.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/apparently-on-moscows-order-functions.html and the sources cited therein.)

            To avoid making Moscow suspicious that they have some nefarious purpose, these representative offices generally operate below the radar screen and seldom call attention to themselves by talking about what they do. That makes a new article about the Chechen office in Tatarstan especially important (tatar-inform.ru/news/predstavitel-glavy-cecni-v-tatarstane-eli-kagarbekov-k-nam-obrashhayutsya-po-vsem-voprosam-my-otkryty-6024738).

            In it, Eli Kagarbekov, head of Grozny’s office in Kazan which opened in July 2024 and himself a native of Tatarstan and local businessman, says that he and his team “deal with a very large spectrum of issues beginning from simple questions ones and ending with economic and even political ones.

            The Chechen office in Kazan is particularly interested in assisting and promoting business cooperation between the two republics, he says, pointing to plans for a large Chechen business mission to Tatarstan in the hopes of expanding ties among the major firms of the two republics, Kagarebekov continues. Earlier this year, a smaller delegation already came.

            There are approximately 1200 Tatars in Chechnya and 1,000 Chechens in Tatarstan, the permanent representative says; and one of his most important tasks is to help each develop and to expand ties between the two in all aspects of life, including tourism, although that became more difficult when direct air connections between Kazan and Grozny were suspended not long ago.

            Perhaps the most intriguing comment Kagarbekov made was his statement that other north Caucasians living in or visiting Tatarstan often turn to  him for assistance because their own republics do not yet have similar permanent representations and they can count on the Chechen one to help.